Web 2.0 storage tool

Microsoft is making a series of changes to its Office Live Small Business service, offering some previously paid-for services free, while adding a new charge for domain name registration after the first year. Domain name registration will continue to be free for the first year. But each subsequent year Microsoft will charge $14.95, though it will add the ability for so-called private registration, where customers can keep their personal information out of the public Whois database. Microsoft said that those who have already signed up for Office Live will continue to have their domain name registered for free "in perpetuity." The company has about 600,000 subscribers for Office Live, which offers, among other things, free e-mail accounts and Web site creation and hosting. The service is tailored to the smallest of businesses that have neither an IT staff nor an outside technology consultant. ***

We"re big fans of Web-based productivity apps here at Webware, but we also like tools that bring Web 2.0 features, such as easy collaboration and access from anywhere, to the apps we know and use already. Xcellery (see Xcellery review) does that for Excel, and a new app, SlideAware, does a similar thing for PowerPoint. SlideAware has two components. First, there"s a plug-in you add to your PowerPoint toolbar (it doesn"t work for Office 2007 yet, so I couldn"t test this component). The plug-in lets you zap your PowerPoint presentations directly to the SlideAware service. ***

We"ve covered the Web 2.0 startup SmartSheet a bit over the past two months [see stories on News.com], but we haven"t had a hands-on review. In light of two important changes with the product that roll out on Thursday, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at it. SmartSheet is a tool for tracking group jobs and tasks. It apes the user interface that many people use to track projects--the spreadsheet--but it"s got features more like a work flow application. For example, you can highlight a row (usually, a row is a task), and click the "ask for update" button in the toolbar, and SmartSheet will send an e-mail off to the person to whom the task is assigned asking for status. They can put their update directly into the form they get in their e-mail, and the update will show up in the sheet. ***